Reverse Meal Planning

rtandon27

Our Friday dinner was had out as our local brewery has a beer garden and pop-up food trucks during summer weekends,  We had some yakitori skewers, bao bun sandwiches and share a plate of gyoza.  Dessert was posh HD yogurt picked up on the way home.  All was good, but tbh, OH does better pan-fried gyoza & steamed bao buns at home so we were uber critical about our dinner.  It was however a lot of fun as involved a country drive to get their.

Yesterday, brunch was our typical Saturday 'bottom of the fridge' omelet.  Mushrooms, chorizo, lettuce, baby yellow toms & onions held together with eggs and topped with some grated cheese.  It's a great way to use up veg before it has to go to the compost!

Dinner was 'el pastor' soft tacos.  The meat was a yellow stickered deal from Waitflower, small flour tortillas from the stores & pickled onions & corn salsa also crafted from what was in the house.  We grilled some red pepper strips as well, and assembled to taste at the table.  OH suddenly decided he was done with the tortillas and made an el pastor bread roll! To each his own, the meal was super tasty!

Not at all sure what we will be doing for today, we've been noshing on fruit and eggy leftovers for breakfast - our last day of staycation is very much a play it by ear kind of day!

rtandon27

Reverse Planning this week involves lunch & dinner from the freezer as much as possible!  At the very least, after year's of the bad habit of not labelling, I've come to a point where everything is labelled so there will be no freezer surprise.  This week's weather will even lend itself to bringing soup to the office to reheat in the microwave.

We seem to have a bumper crop of cooking apples which need to be processed for quick crumbles.  Yesterday's wind resulted in a huge number of surprisingly large ones dropping to the ground.  These have been gathered up and are in half of one drawer. Much Tetris took place to enable this, reminding me that the freezer should be a place for ingredients not leftovers!  In the three years we've had our house, the apples have mostly been had by the pigeons, and the remaining too wormy for consumption so have gone to the municipal compost.  This is the first year the tree has produced masses of fruit and surprisingly healthy at that!  It is also the first year I didn't properly prune it 'correctly', so it has become untidy and a bit of a bully taking over space of other plants!  I think it's proving a point & does not want to be a cottage garden tree.  Delusionally it thinks it has masses of room and is part of an orchard, sadly this is not the case & I managed to also prune off the branches overhanging the 'neighbours of the plastic grass' while they were out for the day!

EssexHebridean

We used the hob during the Octopods free electricity hour on Sunday for cooking up a batch of apples we'd been given RT! We also foraged for a couple of tubs of blackberries so those will be getting dealt with this evening I think, then I can combine as required to create crumbles, ice cream, fruit for topping rice puddings etc... Loving the sound of your unruly tree though! 

I am also firmly in team "eat from the freezer" now as ours is jam packed again. the long weekend will use up the bread that's in there for toast, but undoubtedly it won't be long before we find another user-friendly YS'd bargain. I definitely want to make sure that we eat a pack of the crumpets over the weekend, and if MrEH is lucky a fry-up might make it to the menu perhaps too as we have most of the stuff needed for that. I think Friday evening will be curry - I bought a decent sized pack of diced lamb at the farmer's market and that has been divided into two and frozen...each lot I think should do a pot of curry that will do "portions for now and portions for the freezer" so will feed us another day too, and if so, that will be very good value indeed. There is dhal in the freezer as well, I'm sure... 

rtandon27

Yesterday there was chaos at the major rail station that I take my train home from!  By the time I got home (3 hours late), and popped into MrAl on the way is was well to late to do much more than have a pickety bits dinner.  Delicious but not what was intended!
BF today for both was whatever was left from the pickety dinner - delicious but unconventional.  Lunch for me will be some chicken and salad from the fridge which I have brought into the office & some red stickered berries.
Dinner tonight will be freezer dive & steamed veg - possibly a mix of the fresh bits we have left and some that are frozen.  I'm determined to make room for another lot of apples!
EH - thanks for the reminder about hedgerow berries - I spotted an errant plant in amongst my rambling rose over the weekend, so will check to see if the berries are ripe and then cut the interloper back!  I'm all for volunteer plants, but I do have my limits!

zafiro1984

Still eating mainly from the freezer, tonight was pork and apple burgers with salad. I must remember to write down the quantiles of stuff I used as they turned out quite juicy. I also found some cooked cherries - unlabelled - I wasn't sure if they were cherries or something savoury like a chutney until I had defrosted them, luckily they were cherries so we had them afterwards with a bit of ice-cream. 

I'm also on on board with collecting whatever nature has to offer. Blackberries galore, but I'm also collecting rose hips to make rosehip and orange marmalade, I make a few jars every year, it's quite delicious and a bit different. The mountain ash tree has loads of berries but I think DH will have to get the ladders out if I decide to make rowan jelly. The medlar tree is trying its best to recover from being ringed by deer earlier in the year, no fruit, but I'm hopeful for its recovery. I've got a thug of a rhubarb plant, I'm sure it would take over if allowed, there's too much to eat and not much room in the freezer so I dehydrated a load yesterday. It shrank to about a quarter and was actually edible without sugar, it may do as a snack?

EssexHebridean

MrEH is planning a further foraging session at the weekend zafiro - he wants to make a batch of blackberry jam, and also wants to make a start on collecting rosehips ready to make syrup although your marmalade sounds like a lovely idea - I may have to filter that thought his way.  Loving the idea of dehydrated rhubarb as well - although mostly just impatient for next year when we will be able to eat "some" stems from our plant! (If I find a plant going cheap at some stage, that is something I may try in our little bit of reclaimed ground, too - we'll see.) 

Some frozen prawns made it out of the freezer last night ready for stir fry this evening - the stir fry will also make use of a quantity of the veg in the fridge which is handy as there is a LOT of it! I'm going to make a lamb curry for tea tomorrow using half the diced lamb bought at the farmer's market last week - there will be sufficient for one portion to go back to the freezer but that's fine as it will just be replacing what I took out, and will also be using a tub of dhal from the freezer as an accompaniment so a net gain of one space. At the same time as getting out the lamb I will also grab a pack of sausages to defrost ready for a barbecue tea on Saturday I think. The plan is to rely on the proteins we have in for meals over the weekend and next week - so keeping the grocery spend to a minimum again this week, although I do need a F@rmf00ds visit to stock up on some bits.

TracyS66

Tonight is YS sausages, with mash from the freezer, I froze extra last month, and baked beans, weather here is grey and damp so stodge is required. Hot cross buns also from freezer toasted and I have to have real butter on them!! For afters.

rtandon27

Our biweekly yellow sticker hunt resulted in some strangely flavoured but very tasty beef&pork sausages for dinner last night on posh rolls with cotton candy grapes and blueberries for afters.

Breakfast and lunch were had from the stores - 2 egg stuffed omelette for bf and chicken/prawn/veggie stir fry for lunch.

Today is decidedly rainy and autumnal so will freezer dive for some soup and perhaps ready cooked casseroles to build our meals upon for the day.

We are on staycation again this week so the grocery budget will remain largely intact while the vacation budget will take a hit!

rtandon27

Instead of soup yesterday, we ended up making sloppy joes and honey chipotle wedges.  Used up a pound of turkey mince, half a day old baguette, tomato paste from the freezer, potatoes from the stores and the last of some coleslaw in the fridge.

Brunch this morning was french toast from the rest of the baguette, pan-fired thin pork loin steaks as we'd run out of frozen bacon and a salad of cucumber, tomato and olives.

Linner was the rest of the sloppy joe mix, rolled up in mini tortillas, topped with queso sauce, shredded cheese and baked in the oven - home made enchiladas - with the remainder of the wedges on the side.

OH now has his sights set on something a bit more 'English' for our next reverse planning adventures!

Suffolk_lass

Resorted to a takeaway last night - a healthy kebab from a local Turkish place and some of their beautiful hummus. Leftovers today. And we have so many homegrown runner  and French beans in the fridge I must do beans with new potatoes and poached eggs - heavy on the steamed beans. Think asparagus tips using beans instead! Very RMP!